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When Mark Scheifele sits down his grandkids to tell them about his rookie season in the NHL, they’ll be in for a rather long tale, filled with enough ups and downs to hold their attention.

There was the bogged-down beginning, when the highly-touted first-round draft pick struggled out of the gate, managing just one goal and four assists in his first 24 games.

There was the bittersweet middle, when Scheifele discovered his game, scoring 12 goals and 17 assists in his next 39 games, but lost the head coach who’d showed so much patience in him.

And there was the abrupt end, when a knee injury cut him down with 19 games to go.

To the now-21-year-old’s delight and surprise, the story has one more chapter: an invitation to play for Team Canada at the World Hockey Championship, in Belarus next month.

“I’m so pumped — I can’t wait to get over there,” Scheifele said, Tuesday, fresh off another skate in his efforts to get back the conditioning he lost while injured. “It definitely salvages (the season) a little bit. Obviously I wish the team was still playing right now in the playoffs.

“But I didn’t want my season to be over. I’m happy to play some more hockey.”

You get the impression Scheifele isn’t happy unless he is playing.

King of the rink rats, he’d probably go for a skate on days off if he could.

Getting ready for the Worlds, he’d been going it alone until Olli Jokinen, who’ll play for Finland, joined him, Tuesday.

The knee, Scheifele reports, is 100 percent. If the Jets had pulled off the miracle and made the post-season, he says he’d have found a way to play, Game 1.

“It didn’t happen, but that’s what I was working so hard towards,” he said.

Instead, he’ll hop on a plane early in May, eventually landing with new teammates in a city called Minsk, in a country he knows little about.

On a young Team Canada that has none of the star power of the Olympic team — dotted with names like Kadri, Huberdeau, Rielly and Reimer instead of Crosby, Toews, Weber and Price — Scheifele has no idea of his role.

But he’s sure of this: the Mark Scheifele going into the Worlds is far ahead of the one who went into the season.

Much of that credit goes to teammates and coaches who stuck with him.

Particularly, Claude Noel.

Criticize the fired bench boss all you like for his failure to get through to most of his roster.

But you can’t argue with the job Noel did with the franchise’s first draft pick, a combination of teaching and patience that eventually paid off.

“I obviously had some growing pains to go through. Every player does,” Scheifele said. “Claude helped me a lot. He was always talking to me, always trying to help me through things. He definitely gets a lot of credit.

“That was huge. He didn’t care if I scored a goal. He didn’t care if I was on the scoresheet. He just wanted me to be a good defensive player, first. And when you take care of the defence, the offence just kind of comes out.”

Given Noel was his first NHL coach, Scheifele, perhaps more than some, was hit hard by the firing.

“It was really tough,” he said. “It really makes you take a step back, and realize what just happened. The team was the reason for that happening. It obviously lit a fire under everyone.”

It remains to be seen if this past season winds up being a turning point for this franchise.

It’s almost certain, though, to be the launching pad for the careers of two long-time teammates and friends.

And Scheifele can’t help but chuckle at the prospect of going up against fellow rookie Jacob Trouba at the Worlds.

“We’ll definitely be going at each other a bit,” he said. “When we played each other in world juniors we didn’t really know each other that well at all, and we battled it out. But now that we’re pretty good friends, it’ll be different. We’re both competitors, so we’ll both go at it.

“I’ll definitely have to keep my head up when I’m out there. I know his tricks, though, so it’ll be good.”

Having had a taste of the Canada-US rivalry as a kid, Scheifele can only imagine it’ll be cranked up a notch in men’s play.

“I experienced it at world juniors, I experienced it at U-18s — it’s probably one of the best rivalries in sports,” he said. “For me to get a chance to play in that, I’m pretty excited.